by Lucy Gordon
Mardie was sitting in the little open shed at the back gate, calmly milking the cow in the wooden bail he remembered climbing on as a child.
This place was a time warp, he thought. All the things he’d done in the past fifteen years …
He’d seen the world. His work in Africa …
She’d stayed home and milked the cow.
‘Rather than stand and stare, make yourself useful,’ she yelled up at him. ‘There’s bacon in the fridge. Start cooking. I’ll be inside in five minutes.’
Had he been so obvious?
‘Is there anyone else home?’ he yelled back.
‘No.’ Short and to the point. ‘Except the dogs and they’re not moving. I think they’re in love.’
‘Mardie …’
‘Bacon,’ she yelled. ‘I’d like four rashers, two tomatoes, four slices of toast and I’ll cook my own eggs when I get in. Or you can milk the cow. Take your pick. By the way, the pool of water under the downpipe’s practically a swimming pool. If you hadn’t diverted it, it’d be in my house. You deserve four rashers as well.’
* * *
His dinner suit was still sodden. Of course. Clothes were an issue. Why hadn’t he brought spares? Feeling … weird … he donned Bill’s bathrobe again and headed downstairs.
The kitchen was warm and welcoming and smelled of damp dog. Or a bit more. Bessie’s week of being a stray had left her distinctly on the nose. But if there was one thing Blake’s work in Africa had equipped him for, it was working with smells. He might bathe her before he left, he thought.
Or maybe not. Maybe he should leave fast.
Depending on Mardie.
Both dogs rose as he entered, heading out of their basket to greet him. Bessie came side by side with Bounce. Just touching. She’d learned this mechanism to cope, he thought—finding something trustworthy and sticking like glue.
She touched his hand with her wet nose and he felt his gut twist.
A blind working dog …
Don’t get involved, he told himself, but he already was. He was thinking of bathing her but he was thinking much more.
Breakfast first.
He knew this place backwards. Little had changed. The kitchen had been repainted, though. Sea blue. Nice. The big old woodstove was still the centrepiece.
There were a couple of extraordinary enamelled paintings on either side. Abstract. They looked like wildfire under glass. Even when the woodstove wasn’t lit, these paintings would give warmth to the room, he thought. Mardie always did have an eye for good art.
Breakfast.
The vast frying pan, black with age, seemed an old friend. The bacon was a slab rather than pre-cut rashers, just like it’d always been when he stayed here as a kid. He cut it thick, tossed rashers into the pan, and dog smell was immediately replaced by cooking bacon.
The dogs wiggled with hope, and he cut more. It was a special morning. Bacon all round.
He was halfway through making toast when Mardie appeared. She was wearing another ancient sweater with holes in the elbows. She’d pulled her gumboots off at the door and her feet were covered with bright yellow socks. No holes this morning. Sartorial elegance at its finest.
She’d done her hair, braiding it and coiling it high. It made her look a little more sophisticated than last night, but not much. Nothing could ever make this woman sophisticated, he thought. She was carrying a bucket of milk, the quintessential dairymaid. She looked …
Incredibly sexy.
That was a dumb thing to think. Since when had faded jeans, torn sweater and a bucket of milk made a woman sexy?
But there was no denying, Mardie was … sexy.
And it seemed the admiration worked both ways. ‘I’m glad you’ve put on the bathrobe,’ she said as she heaved her bucket onto the bench. ‘Have you been working out? I can’t remember all those muscles. Standing at the attic window showing them off … I would have thought a bit of modesty would be appropriate.’ Then, as he started to feel discomfited, she grinned. ‘I know. It’s bad manners to comment, but manners were never my forte. And while I’m commenting … You’re too thin. You want a glass of milk? Guaranteed non-pasteurised, non-homogenised, organic, still warm from its own personal milk heater, Clarabelle Cow.’
She dipped a ladle into the bucket and poured two big glasses. Handed him one.
How long since he’d drunk milk straight from the cow?
He thought of the hospital food he’d endured over the past awful weeks. Thought he should have just come here.
That was a bad idea.
He put down the glass and she smiled. ‘Milk moustache,’ she said and handed him a tissue. ‘Nothing changes.’
Something had. They used to wipe each other’s milk moustaches. That had started when they were knee high to a grasshopper. The fact that she’d handed him a tissue …
Now they were practically strangers.
It behoved a man to remember it.
‘Why the cow? Can you drink a bucket a day?’ he asked.
‘I make cheese with a friend. Lorraine’s a local potter—we help each other in all sorts of ways and we make cheese on the side. We have one cow each. It works well because if either of us is busy we do the other’s milking. And we’re good. We sell it at our farmer’s market. You have no idea how much we can charge, and it’s fun.’
Fun. For some reason the word threw him.
Mardie, with her milk moustache, having fun.
‘How long have you been up?’ he asked, moving on with an effort.
‘Dawn. I went round the sheep to make sure none got hit by lightning, but the Cyprus hedge is a great shelter and they’re fine. The gum’s down across the drive, though. You had to go round it last night?’
‘Yeah.’ His mud-covered shoes on the veranda testified to the scrambling he’d had to do to get here.
‘I’ll get the chainsaw onto it. That’s my after-breakfast job. Oh, and I believe your car’s a write-off.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
‘I’ve seen it,’ she said grimly. ‘How fast were you going?’
‘Obviously too fast.’
‘You’re so lucky you’re not dead.’
And there was something about the way she said it … The lightness suddenly disappeared. Her words were flat, with a faint tremor beneath.
There was something about the way her face changed.
He knew this woman. He hadn’t seen her for fifteen years but he knew …
‘Who else has been killed in a car crash?’ he asked, and it was a question and a statement all in one.
‘I …’ She stopped. She shook her head but he knew her denial was a lie.
‘Your mother?’ He felt sick. He should have asked.
‘My mum’s in Banksia Bay Nursing Home.’ She concentrated on fetching eggs from the pantry, refusing to return to car wrecks. ‘Her arthritis cripples her. I bring her out here whenever I can. She sits on the veranda in the sun and tells me all the things I’m doing wrong.’ She smiled again then, starting to crack eggs into the pan. Moving on. And he couldn’t push. He had no right.
‘But you know something?’ she said, still inexorably changing the subject. ‘She’s happy. She doesn’t need to stay here. All these years we fought to keep her independent, she finally gave in and now she’s surrounded by friends. She plays bridge, she watches old movies, she reads. She doesn’t need her daughter to do the humiliating things. She comes out here and enjoys the farm but she’s always ready to go back to her comfy bedroom with her music and her books and the local nurses who make her feel loved. I don’t feel bad about it at all.’
‘So you’re here completely by yourself?’
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then … ‘Yes.’ It was almost defiant.
‘You should have gone to university.’ It was an explosion.
She paused, mid egg break. Stiffened. Then she calmly went on breaking eggs. Four. She scooped bacon fat over them so they cooked sunny-side up. Slid them onto tw
o plates. Sat at the table and loaded her plate with bacon.
‘I’ve never regretted it,’ she said at last. ‘Not for a moment.’
‘Look at you.’ Why was he feeling so angry? Why was he feeling … that it had all been a waste? It wasn’t fair to attack her, her lifestyle, but … the idea that she’d been mouldering here was suddenly killing him. ‘I go away for fifteen years, I get myself a medical degree, a career. I’ve done so much. And you …’
‘Have you been happy?’
‘Happiness isn’t the point.’
‘What else is the point?’ she demanded, buttering toast. ‘My mother’s arthritis started when she was thirty. When she was thirty-eight she lost her husband. Yet she’s happy. She had the choice. Miserable or happy. She chose happy. She still chooses happy. Pass the marmalade, please.’
‘What did she do with her life?’
‘She made us all happy,’ she snapped. ‘Including you. Don’t you dare say that’s a waste. Marmalade!’
‘Where are you putting all this?’ She was about five feet two. She was little and wiry and compact. She was eating enough to keep him going for a full day.
‘Work makes you hungry,’ she said evenly, and her anger had been carefully and obviously put away. ‘You’ve been lying in bed letting your calories sink languorously anywhere they want. My calories have been bouncing all the way down to the bottom paddock on the tractor, into the bails to milk Clarabelle, over to see your car and the ruined tree, and they’re all used up. Speaking of your car …’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll ring Raff, the local cop, at eight. And Henrietta.’
‘Henrietta?’
‘The lady who runs the pound.’
‘No.’
It was an explosion, and the word stopped them both short.
Mardie paused, her bacon midway to her mouth. She gazed at him, calm and direct. ‘No?’
From their basket, the two dogs watched. Or one dog watched and the other watched by proxy. Bounce had been declared Bessie’s eyes.
‘No?’ she said cautiously. ‘Are you offering her a home?’
‘I can’t.’ That was practically an explosion, too.
‘Neither can I.’ She met his gaze square on. Knew what he was asking. Rejected it. ‘Don’t ask it of me.’
He needed to make some phone calls before he talked about the next option. He needed to know his facts. But for now … ‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘She’s a working dog. Look at her. She’s beautiful, young, energetic, aching to run. She’s bred to work. I’ve seen injured working dogs before. Without their work, they pine. Look at how thin she is. Charlie Hunter is a kind old man and he would have loved her to bits. He’ll have fed her whatever she’ll take. When he went into the nursing home he’ll have handed her over to Henrietta at the pound, and Hen loves dogs. She’ll have hand fed her if that’s what it took to get her to eat. But she’s still stick-thin. I know a depressed dog when I see one. She’s blind and she’s miserable.’
‘So you’d put her down?’
‘Like it’s my decision?’ She glared. ‘That’s unfair and you know it. But as for keeping her … Bounce would be out every day with me, working the sheep. He’d come home and Bessie would smell him, would know what we’d been doing. Border collies have arguably the highest IQ in the animal kingdom. They’re not content to be lapdogs. It won’t be safe for me to have her where sheep might kick her, where blind doesn’t work. She’s not meant to spend the rest of her life in a basket by the fire and I won’t do it to her.’
‘Cataracts are removable.’
‘Maybe.’ She spread marmalade on a second piece of toast, looked at it and then set it aside. ‘I read my veterinary guide after you went to bed last night. Cataract operations in dogs are problematic. There’s a high chance of failure and the cost per eye is astronomical. I couldn’t even think of going there. Putting her though that …’
‘But if you wanted her …’
‘You found her,’ she said, and her voice was back to harsh.
‘She could never stay with me.’
‘What’s the difference between staying in a city apartment while you work all day, or staying by herself here?’
‘I don’t work in Australia,’ he said.
‘You don’t work in Sydney?’
‘My great-aunt had an apartment there. I’m clearing it out. From now on I’ll be based in California. I really can’t take on a dog. But I didn’t mean to make you responsible.’
‘But you did,’ she said, suddenly savage. ‘You’re making me feel all sorts of things I don’t want to feel.’
He raked his hair. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Good. Excellent, in fact. Let’s get you out of here.’
That was surely the best option. He glanced down at his bathrobe. Winced. Thought about his still-soggy dinner suit.
She’d followed his glance. ‘I’ll run into town when the shops open and buy what you need.’
‘I need to get back to Sydney.’
‘There’s a bus this afternoon.’
‘I don’t …’
‘Want to use the bus? You have no choice. Otherwise you’re stuck here for the weekend and this house is too small. You know it is. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.’
‘What needs doing?’
‘I told you. I need to attack the tree across the drive with the chainsaw. Otherwise I can’t get into town to get you clothes. I also need to move the sheep back into the outer paddocks. The Cyprus run’s restricted—it’s my safe paddock but there’s not much feed. I either have to move them or hand feed them. So if you’ll excuse me … Every minute you keep me here is a minute more before I can run into town to get clothes.’
‘You expect me to sit in your father’s bathrobe while you work?’
She stilled. ‘My father’s bathrobe?’
‘I assumed …’
‘Don’t assume,’ she snapped. ‘My father never wore a bathrobe in his life.’
‘Whose …?’
‘Stay out of it.’ Her anger was palpable. Any minute she’d throw something at him.
‘Mardie, I need to help you,’ he said, feeling his way through what seemed a minefield.
‘You can help by staying out of my way.’
He rose, angry himself. ‘I’m not useless.’
‘You’re useless in a bathrobe or a dinner suit.’
‘I did fix the spouting.’
She glowered. ‘So you did. I’m trying to remember it.’
‘Are you punishing me for walking away fifteen years ago?’
Whoa. There was a moment’s deathly silence. Her face lost colour. She closed her eyes and when she opened them something had changed. Anger had been replaced with pure ice.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ she demanded, speaking slowly, each syllable dripping with frost. ‘You think I’ve been longing for you for fifteen years? Doing nothing? Grazing a few sheep, pining after my long-lost love, playing lovelorn little hayseed?’
‘I didn’t say …’
‘You didn’t have to say. What you’re thinking is like a huge placard over your head.’
‘All I said was that it was a waste …’
‘To stay here? To live where I love to live?’
‘A hundred sheep …’
‘I’m a craft therapist, Blake Maddock.’ She was practically yelling. ‘And an artist. I did my training part-time, an art course in Whale Cove, going back and forth for almost four years. I work in the local nursing home, organising outings, craft, music, fun. I also practice my art and I’m good. It gives me huge pleasure, and I’m starting to sell. I’ve sold off acreage because I can’t run this farm as a full-time commitment but I still love it. My sheep make me happy. I love my work in the nursing home. I make the best cheese in the district. My mum still loves coming out here. I don’t earn enough for luxury but I love everything about my life. And in case you think I’ve been pining for you … You think you’re wearing my dad’s bathr
obe? I bought that for Hugh. For my husband. Hugh was killed in a car accident two years ago, the week before Christmas, the week before I gave it to him. For some reason I kept it and I loved it. So you’re standing there in my husband’s bathrobe, accusing me of having no life, of having lived in a time warp since you left, of doing nothing. And you kissed me last night like you were doing me a favour!’
There was no practically yelling about it. The last sentence was truly a blast. The dogs backed to the far end of the basket and cringed.
Blake felt like doing exactly the same.
‘Mardie …’
‘I’m not listening to another word. If I listen to any more, you risk getting a bucket of milk thrown at you. I’m going out now. I’m going to cut the tree away from the driveway and I’m moving sheep. Then I’m going to drive into town, fetch you some clothes that aren’t Hugh’s and buy you a bus ticket. I believe it leaves at two. I’ll drive you to the bus station and it’ll be pure pleasure to see the back of you. It was lovely to see you but now it’ll be lovely to see you go. So now … Take care of the dogs while I’m out. And thanks for cooking the bacon. I’d eat some more but I feel like choking.’
She stomped out of the kitchen. Bounce leaped after her and she slammed the door.
He was left with Bessie.
He was left with what he’d done.
* * *
Bessie whimpered, nosed her way across to him and lay her head on his knee.
The little collie was doing it for her own need, not his, he told himself, but he took comfort anyway as she rubbed her head under his palm.
Mardie was a widow. She’d trained as a craft therapist.
Fifteen years and he knew nothing of anything. It was a great black hole.
He should have kept in touch.
Walking away from Banksia Bay had been a no-brainer. From the moment Robbie died he knew he’d have to do something. He remembered the announcement of his final-year marks, the letter offering him a place at medical school and the relief of finally knowing he had a plan.
But then he remembered telling Mardie and watching her face pale as it had paled a few moments ago.
He’d been exuberant, exultant. ‘I’m going to Sydney. I can finally do something with my life.’
